Building systems composed of industrialized manufactured parts ususlaly rely upon well-known geometries where the shapes of the components are designed according to the geometry dictated by the underlying spatial grids. Such underlying grids have usually been periodic in nature, though some recent proposals have included non-periodic geometries. Examples of such building systems include: Fuller's octet truss composed of regular octahedra and tetrahedra and already anticipated by Alexander Graham Bell, Pearce's Mini-max system based on the twenty-six strut directions determined by the thirteen symmetry axes of a regular cube, NASA's node for the Space Station, also based on the twenty-six directions of the regular cube, the Mero system based on the eighteen directions of the regular cube, Baer's 31-zome system based on the thirty-one axes of symmetry of the regular icosahedron, and Lalvani's systems based on the various directions of the infinite classes of regular prisms.
Numerous patents have been cited in this field and include: U.S. Pat. No. 1,113,371 to Pajeau; U.S. Pat. No. 1,960,328 to Breines; U.S. Pat. No. 2,909,867 to Hobson; U.S. Pat. No. 2,936,530 to Bowen; U.S. Pat. No. 3,563,581 to Sommerstein, U.S. Pat. No. 3,600,825 to Pearce; U.S. Pat. No. 3,632,147 to Finger; U.S. Pat. No. 3,722,153 to Baer; U.S. Pat. No. 3,733,762 to Pardo; U.S. Pat. No. 3,918,233 to Simpson; U.S. Pat. No. 4,113,256 to Hutchings; U.S. Pat. No. 4,129,975 to Gabriel, U.S. Pat. No. 4,133,152 to Penrose; U.S. Pat. No. 4,183,190 to Bance; U.S. Pat. No. 4,295,307 to Jensen; U.S. Pat. No. 4,620,998 to Lalvani; U.S. Pat. No. 4,679,961 to Stewart; U.S. Pat. No 4,723,382 to Lalvani; U.S. Pat. No. 5,007,220 to Lalvani and U.S. Pat. No. 5,036,635 to Lalvani. Related foreign patents include U.K. patents 1,283,025 to Furnell and 2,159,229A to Paton; West German patent 2,305,330 to A. Cilveti and 2,461,203 to Aulbur; French patents 682,854 to Doornbos et al and 1,391,973 to Stora; and Italian patent 581,277 to Industria Officine Magliana. The disclosure of these patents are hereby incorporated herein by reference.
All modular periodic and non-periodic building space frame systems in prior art are based on regular (Platonic), semi-regular (Archimedean) polyhedra and regular prisms. These restrictions though necessary from certain formal aspects of symmetry and modularity, are limiting for an architect from the point of view of flexibility in designing irregular, one-of-a-kind compositions for individual projects and clients. Compared with systems based on regular polyhedra, where at most three different lengths of struts are used, non-regular modular building systems, like the ones disclosed herein, use a greater variety of lengths and regular or arbitrary angles. There are no building systems based on nodes derived from non-regular polyhedra in prior art. The co-pending application 07/740,504 deals with non-regular polyhedra derived from various vector-stars, wherein the vector-stars are used as a geometric generators but not as physical building elements. In the present disclosure, the vector-stars are used as physical nodes of a building system.
The use of non-regular nodes, as described herein, permits a greater flexibility in design and architectural layout by allowing the possibility of making a variety of periodic configurations, a variety of non-periodic configurations, and a variety of arbitrary and random configurations from fixed number of building parts. Such a flexibility is greatly desirable for an architect, since the same system can allow each architect to develop his or her own designs in an endless variety of ways. In addition, non-regular space frame nodes permit a modular randomness which is a desirable goal in architectural design. The "modular" aspect is neccessary for economy in technological production, manufacture and assembly in both traditional and computer-aided design and manufacturing environments. The "randomness" aspect in design is important since it permits the designer to break the order locally and globally within a system and produce irregular compositions.
The search for novelty in design leads the designer to look for new ways to configure and structure spaces within architectural contexts. Building systems based on non-regular polyhedral nodes expand the architectural vocabulary by providing structures with irregular angles, lengths and faces. Such structures, while retaining the property of permitting periodic configurations, permit non-periodic configurations, and further permit irregular-random configurations out of a limited number of building components, thereby advancing the building art.